Review of Apocalypse Now

Apocalypse Now sets a great table, but burns the bird

What’s worse than having a bad ending for your movie? Not having one at all.

I’m speaking in terms of the filmmaker here. Obviously, the movie ended. They all do. Frames come and go a dozen at a time and eventually people leave the theater or log off Netflix or eject their VHS cassette (haha, just kidding – nobody does that anymore). But as a director, it must suck having a great movie on your hands and no good plan on how to wrap it up.

Martin Sheen opened the movie by taking a job trying to find an officer who definitely went rogue and probably went crazy. That is, if you’re going to believe Harrison Ford, who is for some reason in this movie for exactly three minutes. Apparently nobody had heard of Star Wars yet. So the entire movie, Sheen is traveling upriver, looking for OH SHIT – Marlon Brando is in this movie? AWESOME! Along the way, he gets sidetracked, has to fight his way out of some situations, and runs into some nut jobs. This is where the movie should have stayed. Because they were awesome sequences, both in the action and the characters. But the entire trip, we were distracted by this eminent showdown with Brando. This isn’t the real movie. This is just a pretty streamer going from corner to corner in the den. And then comes the showdown.

I don’t know how to describe it but to say it was weird. Was Brando crazy? Why were all these people – including the last guy they sent to kill him – worshipping him like a god? What is his fetish with decapitation? I never really got the feeling he was a bad guy, despite the decapitations. But I never got the feeling he was a good guy. And it wasn’t like Paul Reiser from Alien, where I just didn’t know because he walked the line so well. It was because I didn’t really care. Or I didn’t really get it. And I felt like I should. I mean this is Apocalypse Now! So I looked online. Apparently nobody else got it either. Including Coppola.

If that movie could have just somehow lived in those seemingly disparate sequences in the middle, it would have been so much better. If there was a way to wrap it in something else, like maybe some lettuce or naan or something. Because the white bun wasn’t working. But MAN would it have taken balls to watch the final cut and decide to cut Brando out of the movie. Yeah, that’s probably not the best use of money. But instead, we got what we got. Still, that middle section with Robert Duvall and the other trouble they ran into was fantastic. Just cut the movie off 45 minutes from the end and you’ll thank me. And yes, I’m aware I kind of said Paul Reiser did a better acting job than Marlon Brando. I’m not sayin, I’m just sayin.

5.5/10
Dustin Fisher

Review of Glory

Glory was a great story wrapped in a tortilla that tasted too much like Ferris Bueller

To celebrate Memorial Day this year, I decided to watch Ferris Bueller ride a horse for 2 hours.

Glory is an excellent film. It won three Oscars, ignited (or at least added some gasoline to) the conversation on race in Hollywood movies, and introduced the world to Denzel Washington. And we must all thank you for that. But man, it was tough to get passed some of it to be able to appreciate it for what it was.

First, there was the most ridiculous soul patch in Hollywood history. I know Matthew Broderick has proven himself to be talented – especially on Broadway – and this was probably a great move for him to get out from under that Ferris Bueller thundercloud. But this was only 3 years after that movie and that’s a huge jump to expect us to make. Even watching it 30 years later, all I could see was Ferris Bueller trying to act serious. And why was he on a horse for over half the movie? Is that really how people just got around campus back then?

But if you could look passed him, the movie had some great things to say. Morgan Freeman, Denzel, and Andre Braugher did an excellent job representing black soldiers with three dynamically different personalities, backgrounds, and reasons for joining the fight. The dynamic between them was as compelling as the dynamic between each of them and the white folks who were in various stages of in charge.

But then there was that first fight scene. And I know this was a lot of years and a lot of technology ago, but did people seriously just stand 20 feet apart firing guns at each other and reloading for 20 seconds? There were no better ideas? That was war back then? Man, that’s brutal. And people wanted to do this? People still want to do this? I get that I’m a coward and not much of a patriot, but people seemed quite proud to be selected to march to their death. Man, I just don’t get war.

Which brings me to my favorite scene in the movie, where Denzel asks Broderick who wins? What is really going to change? At least for him. And of course the fact that this is a true story, with much of the voiceover coming from the actual letters written by Col. Robert Shaw also makes me appreciate the movie a lot more. And after speaking with a historian of some qualification, I have verified that soul patches were all the rage, soldiers did stand remarkably close just shooting at each other, and rich Boston folk rode their horses around just because they could.

So if I could score this movie based solely on my appreciate for it, rather than my enjoyment of it, I would probably score it a lot higher. But since nobody is making me do this, I won’t. I’ll do this.

5/10
Dustin Fisher

Up to Date List of Retired Movies

The following movies have been retired from the Movie Madness tournament after making to the Final Four of a major tournament (the number in parenthesis is the season it was retired):

• The Princess Bride (1/2)
• Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark (1)
• Back to the Future (1/2)
• Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1)
• Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back (2)
• Star Wars: A New Hope (2)
• Forrest Gump (3)
• Saving Private Ryan (3)
• The Shawshank Redemption (3)
• Jurassic Park (3)
• Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (4)
• Die Hard (4)
• Gladiator (4)
• The Lion King (4)
• Toy Story (5)
• Ghostbusters (5)
• The Sandlot (5)
• Aladdin (5)
• The Dark Knight (6)
• Groundhog Day (6)
• Deadpool (6)
• The Wizard of Oz (6)

Note: There are only 22 retired movies because we didn't decide to do it until after the 2nd season and both Back to the Future and The Princess Bride were in the finals from seasons 1 and 2.